1. I am a 25 year old heterosexual Japanese American man.

2. I am single and have never had a girlfriend. I reside in the Pacific Northwest and could very well be a victim of the infamous “Seattle freeze” syndrome where people in this city have a difficult time making friends. Maybe it’s the rain that brings us all down emotionally.

3. I am a virgin (laugh all you want!).

4. Please don’t get the image in your mind that I’m a hopeless loser who can’t talk to women. I can talk to women and have plenty female friends. I can be a bit shy and introverted at times, but the major reason why I’ve never had sex before is due to Item #4.

5. I grew up in a conservative Christian household. My mom is a moderate but my dad is definitely on the right side of the religious spectrum. I love them both and would never trade them for different parents. I grew up in the church believing sex outside of marriage is a sin that can lead to damnation in Hell. Though I’m a Protestant, I definitely have that “Catholic guilt” complex going on in my life even as an adult. I still go to church (I go to my mom’s church), but I don’t go as often as I did when I was a child. I still believe in God, even though I tend to question the church’s teachings.

6. I went to a private Christian university and received a great education there. I’m definitely a proud alumnus. But as expected, casual sex was not something that happened openly on my campus. Yes, non-marital sex does happen there, but it isn’t nearly as prevalent as it is on other campuses across America.

7. A smaller reason why I am still a virgin, outside of religious guilt, is my ethnicity. I’m Asian. And we all know the stereotype associated with Asian men: They all have small penises. It’s a stereotype that I openly laugh at and joke about in public (when I’m with friends, of course), but it’s a stereotype that deeply hurts me inside. The “Asian Men Have Baby Penises” stereotype goes deeper than just external anatomy. It desexualizes Asian men and places us in the category of being “less than a man” or “not a real man.” This social emasculation gives me a somewhat low self-esteem in the romance/sex department. I need to work on changing that.

8. Though there are plenty of exceptions, I find in my life that white Caucasian women are far less likely to date an Asian man than a man of any other race. Though interracial relationships are more common today than it used to be, the white woman/Asian man dynamic is still a very rare occurrence.

9. Related to Item #6 (this is more of a long essay than a list of 25 Things!), I find women of all colors to be beautiful. White, black, brown, red, yellow or mixed, women are unbelievably beautiful creatures. While most of my crushes have been on young Asian women (my current crush is a young lady who is half Japanese and half white), a gorgeous woman of any race or ethnicity will make my head turn. While I personally understand why some people prefer one race over the other, my sexual attraction is colorblind.

10. While my sexual attraction is colorblind, my preference in relationships is not. For reasons I cannot explain, I’d prefer to settle down with an Asian woman than a woman of any other color. Does this make me racist or tribalist? Perhaps. This unexplainable preference slightly bothers me.

11. Returning to the subject of Asian men and penis size, I am somewhat of a gym rat and spend anywhere between 6 to 8 hours at the gym per week working out. I mostly lift weights and do light cardio and stretching. While I don’t look anything like a bodybuilder or a professional athlete by any stretch of the imagination (I love watching football and baseball, but playing sports has never been my strength), I think I look fairly good naked. But my major insecurity when naked is that little penis hanging between my legs.

12. Is my penis really small? Truthfully, probably not. But that belief is so ingrained in my psyche that I believe it is. There’s an old joke that guys who have small penises drive large trucks and SUVs to compensate. Because I drive a medium-sized sedan, I compensate by building muscles at the gym. My toned body is my way of compensating. I have no idea if it works.

13. I’ve come to define my fear of having a small penis as “Small Penis Syndrome.” Those who suffer from SPS don’t necessarily have a small penis; they just think they do. SPS is all psychological and has little to do with reality.

14. Speaking of going to the gym, in the locker room I do what every guy does: I do research to see how I “measure” up. As far as my empirical observations go, flaccid penises come in all shapes and sizes. What really matters is the size of an erect penis, which of course no one has in a locker room. That would be awkward. But my casual observations lean toward Asian guys tending to have smaller endowments than our white, black and Latino peers. Is it true that black men have larger penises? Maybe. Some of the black guys that work out at my gym seem to be very well endowed.

15. I have two main fetishes that I don’t consider to be that odd: older women and female bodybuilders.

16. Being attracted to older women is pretty normal and has been explained many times. Older women are seen as more experienced, in need of sexual liberation (or awakening), it’s taboo, it’s looked down upon by society at large, etc. I won’t go into much detail about this.

17. Attraction toward female bodybuilders is a little less common but still not too far out there. I love women with large muscles. I find them incredibly sexy. I don’t find skinny, bony women to be that attractive. A thick, strong woman with big, bulging muscles is a major turn-on. Though I’ve never personally met an FBB, I’ve seen toned, athletic women at the gym. And trust me, they make it difficult to concentrate on my workout.

18. My idea of heaven on Earth would be to spend the night with a female bodybuilder. Just Google Lisa Cross, Karen Zaremba, Lynn McCrossin, Yvette Bova, Victoria Dominguez or Denise Masino to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

19. I watch porn occasionally, but what really turns me on is reading sexy scenes from romance books. Romance books written by women are preferable. One chapter out of a Linda Howard novel can turn me on more than watching an hour of mind-numbing predictable porn. I find most porn to be boring or disgusting.

20. I sometimes watch porn to see how well-endowed the male performers are. Some are very large, others appear more normal. Because I’m not attracted to men, I have no idea what sizes of penises straight women and gay men prefer to see in their porn.

21. I think there should be more Asian men doing porn, which is odd considering I don’t consider doing porn to be that noble of a profession. The more we see Asian men as sexual beings, the better society will become (and the dating pool for me!).

22. When I do watch or look at porn, I usually search for muscular women. Whether it’s two FBBs doing a lesbian scene, an FBB going solo or an FBB having sex with a man or fellow male bodybuilder, I prefer to see a muscular woman in action than a skinny, surgery-enhanced girl with fake breasts.

23. Speaking of which, I am not terribly crazy about breasts. I find a woman with small breasts to be more beautiful than a woman with large melons on her chest. And I consider myself to be a leg guy. A great pair of legs will make me go crazy. If the stereotype is that Asian men have small penises, there’s also the hurtful stereotype that Asian women have small breasts. I would imagine this stereotype would hurt them just as much as the small penis stereotype hurts me.

24. I masturbate about 4 to 5 times a week. Since I was 12, I’ve masturbated using the same method: I lay face-down naked in my bed and rub my penis against the mattress till climax. Essentially, this simulates missionary sex. Never once have I manually stimulated myself to orgasm, which is how we normally picture male masturbation.

25. And now, a factoid you’ve all been waiting for: When erect, my penis is 5.5 inches long and 4.75 inches in circumference. There you go. Is that small? Or normal? Or in between? I’ll let you decide.